Chapter 1: The Brief

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who cry at weddings, and those who check the canapés for structural integrity. I am proudly the second kind.

Cole, event planner, chronic non-crier

The bridesmaid was crying into her bouquet again.

This was, by Zara Cole's count, the fourth bridesmaid to dissolve into happy tears this afternoon  and the ceremony hadn't even started yet. They were still in the dressing room, for heaven's sake. The bride was still in her robe. Someone had knocked over the mascara. Someone else had knocked over the person who knocked over the mascara. And Zara, thirty-one years old, co-owner of Lagos's most in-demand wedding planning firm, wearer of sensible heels and carrier of a clipboard that had never once trembled was standing in the middle of all of it like the eye of a very emotional, very floral storm.

"Temi." She touched the bridesmaid's elbow gently. "Sweetheart. The waterproof makeup cost forty thousand naira. Please save the feelings for after the vows."

Temi sniffled, laughed, and went to find a tissue. Zara exhaled. Crisis managed.

This was what she was good at: the management of other people's love stories. Not the feeling of them. Never the feeling of them.

She moved through the room with the quiet precision of someone who had done this three hundred and twelve times yes, she had counted, yes, she had a spreadsheet  adjusting a veil here, straightening a buttonhole there, intercepting a nervous father of the bride before he could make a toast that would definitely involve the words "finally" and "we were starting to worry." She was everywhere and somehow invisible, the way the best wedding planners always were. The couple would remember the flowers, the lighting, the exact pitch of the string quartet. They would not remember Zara.

That was the job. She had made peace with it on approximately Day One.

Mostly.

Her phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. Then a third time in rapid, impatient succession, like whoever was calling had never once in their life been told to wait.

She ducked into the corridor, already frowning at the screen. The number was unknown. Private. The kind of number that belonged to someone who had people to make calls for them but had, for reasons that immediately unsettled her, decided to call themselves.

She answered.

"Ms. Cole."

It wasn't a question. It was a statement her name delivered like a verdict, low and unhurried, with the particular confidence of a man who had never in his life said "um."

"Speaking," she said, because she was a professional and professionals did not say "who is this" even when every nerve in their body was saying exactly that.

"My name is Damien Voss. I need a wedding planner."

She blinked. Damien Voss. The Damien Voss  thirty-four, Lagos-born, London-educated, heir to the Voss Group's shipping and real estate empire, whose net worth the business blogs described as "obscene" and whose personal life they described as "closely guarded"  which was a polite way of saying no one actually knew anything about him except that he was rich, he was private, and he photographed extremely well in suits.

"Mr. Voss," she said carefully, "my firm typically books eight to ten months in advance."

"I'm aware. I need someone in four months."

"That's…"

"I'll pay triple your standard rate. Plus a completion bonus if everything goes without incident."

Zara's clipboard actually lowered an inch. A completely involuntary movement, which she resented deeply.

"I'd need to understand the scope before…"

"My assistant will send the brief. If you're interested, come to my office. Monday, ten a.m. If you're not" A pause, barely a second, precisely weighted. "I'll find someone else."

The line went dead.

Zara stared at her phone.

Then she stared at it some more.

In the dressing room behind her, the fourth bridesmaid had recovered, and the fifth had started. The string quartet was warming up somewhere below. The father of the bride had found a microphone,  this was going to be a situation where someone was calling her name from three different directions at once.

She had ninety seconds of a wedding to save and, apparently, a decision to make.

She tucked the phone into her pocket, rolled her shoulders back, and walked into the chaos like she owned it. Because she did.

But later that evening, in the quiet of her flat, sitting cross-legged on her kitchen counter with leftover jollof rice and her laptop open, she pulled up the brief his assistant had sent.

Four hundred guests. Private venue. International vendors. A flower budget that made her actually press her palm to her chest.

And at the bottom, two words under the groom's name:

Groom: Damien Voss.

Bride: Celeste Hargrove.

She googled the name. Found the engagement announcement immediately  a glossy photo, society pages, Celeste in white and Damien in a suit that probably cost more than Zara's first car. They looked perfect. Curated. The kind of couple that belonged in a watch advertisement.

She scrolled.

And stopped.

One photo, buried three pages deep, from a private dinner six weeks ago, the metadata on the gossip blog still visible. Celeste, laughing, leaning toward a man across a candlelit table. Not Damien. Someone else entirely. Someone with a familiar jaw and familiar eyes and a smile that Zara had spent eighteen months trying very hard to forget.

The rice went cold.

Zara closed the laptop. Opened it again. Closed it.

She told herself it was nothing. She told herself she was tired and her eyes were playing tricks and besides, it wasn't her business, it was never her business, she planned the weddings, she didn't audit the marriages.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unsaved number.

Unknown: Monday. 10am. Don't be late, Ms. Cole.

She looked at the closed laptop. Looked at the text. Looked at the photo still burned behind her eyelids Celeste's laugh, the candlelight, and the man she recognised down to the exact way he tilted his head.

She typed back:

Zara: I'll be there.

She should have gone to bed. She should have closed the tab, eaten her rice, and made the sensible, self-preserving decision in the morning.

Instead, she opened the laptop one more time.

The man in the photo smiled back at her from the screen.

It was Marcus.